falls the shadow
by turkeyish
Summary: She is everywhere.  Written for the 2011 Narnia Fic Exchange.


**falls the shadow**

**i**

She is everywhere.

**ii**

She is in Calormen.

...

Calormen is hot, Edmund finds. The people are slim, tall, and made dark by the sun, and they drape themselves in loose, flowing clothes that flutter slightly and take deep breaths with every step they take. In the desert, the heat shimmers and hovers like a living thing, and in the city, it sets the white walls aglow. The bazaars throb with the heat of too many bodies packed tight under tents and in stalls, and the swell of haggling voices rises and sweeps over everything else like a tidal wave.

Calormen is also crowded. The narrow, dusty streets bustle with Calormene royals borne aloft in litters outfitted with silky, jewel-coloured curtains, their bearers' muscles gleaming with the sweat of exertion, strong wrists encircled by heavy cuffs wrought from gold. Edmund's guide tells him that the gold cuffs mark them as slaves of the nobility. Barefoot children race each other and shout out gleefully, nearly tripping irate adults and nimbly avoiding the vicious ear pinches of the guards.

Calormen is beautiful. Fruit that can't be found anywhere in Narnia hang from gnarled tree boughs like plump, juicy jewels fatter than Edmund's fist. Weaving in and out of the thick crowds are magicians, snake charmers, soothsayers, and pickpockets – all searching for a bit of coin.

Starving eyes linger deep in darkened alleys. A malcontent whisper.

And always, Calormene voices praise the Tisroc.

Edmund's eyes harden and his mouth tightens as he silently resolves to speak to the High King about this. His manservant is quietly dispatched to gather further intelligence, underneath the guise of making sundry purchases for the Narnian delegation.

The feast prepared for King Edmund, Narnia's envoy to Calormen, is glorious. He laughs gamely as he perches on a plush cushion embroidered with silver thread in front of a low gilded table and attempts to wrap his very English and very proper tongue around the names of the dishes that his hosts try to teach to him. The local language is rolling, curling, and seductive, and pours from native mouths like liquefied sweets. His hosts tell him in an indulgent manner that he does better than any foreigner before him ever has, and nod approvingly and proudly as he devours his food in a state of culinary bliss.

His favourite part of the evening's entertainment is the show put on by the small troupe of men wielding scimitars that wink and gleam and dance in the flickering firelight.

A close second is the exquisite and fragile glass bowl attached to a length of hose that he toys idly with just before he inhales the fragrant smoke. The taste of it on his tongue is like nothing he's ever had before, smooth and potent. He grins as his hosts teach him how to blow rings made of dark, hazy smoke.

...

She comes to him in the middle of the night, in the middle of a walled kingdom set deep and nestled comfortably in the middle of a vast and rippling desert.

...

Dawn is announced by a single long, low note trumpeted by a horn that seems to reverberate around all of Calormen.

Edmund and Susan stand together at a tall window overlooking a small courtyard, cradling identical tiny, handle-less cups filled with a strong, dark tea that smells and tastes like some rare desert flower, watching as their hosts kneel and touch reverent fingertips to the dewy ground in low bows, their quiet murmurs floating up and away in waves of synchronised prayer, the cadence of the language sounding like some otherworldly melody.

Susan turns to study her youngest brother with a too-perceptive gaze, and she doesn't have to speak for Edmund to know exactly what she's thinking. He imagines what she sees in front of her at that very moment: a tall, slim boy-king with darkness lingering in his eyes and a fine tension that's shot through his every limb.

"Tell me." Susan murmurs her command, and Edmund can't help but grin. Always the determined Queen, no matter how she masks her steel strength with beautiful robes and pretty chatter.

"She tells me that I will belong to her forever."

Susan nods, and then turns to leave.

"Don't you have any advice to give?" Edmund asks when she's nearly at the door. Not that he expects any – none of this is new to any of the Pevensies.

Susan pauses and looks at him thoughtfully. "Jadis has no voice," she says, her voice quiet but fierce – another steely command encased in velvet. "And…stiff upper lip." And then she's gone.

And Edmund can't help but laugh, because of all of them, Susan always has been most sure of who she is and where she comes from, the most practical.

**iii**

She is in his dreams.

...

"Did she say anything this time?" Lucy asks, sitting next to him on his bed, his hand clasped comfortably in her smaller one. Her room always has been closest to his, and it's always she who senses his restlessness in the middle of the night.

She knows what that tightening around his jaw means, that flicker of anger and pain and exhaustion and desperation in his eyes – knows who it means.

Edmund shakes his head. A ghost of a wry smile flits across his face as he ruminates briefly on the fact that Jadis hasn't uttered one word since Susan willed it.

Lucy sits and waits patiently, and then –

"She won't stop following me. No matter where my dreams take me, she's always just there, watching, waiting."

Lucy frowns deeply, thinking hard, and then stretches her short arms around her brother in a tight hug. "She can't get you," Lucy says in her tiny, determined voice. "She won't follow you any longer."

Edmund smiles as he returns his younger sister's fierce hug. Lucy always has had the most determination out of any of them.

**iv**

She is in England.

...

England has never been the same, not since Narnia. But there are ways of making it feel almost like home.

Boxing matches after school that make him feel like he's back in Archenland, the duelling club that reminds him of his former fencing master, who hailed from Galma. Edmund even has a conversation with a stranger one day, a Captain Jack Harkness who is in London on a short leave from the war, and all the talk of military stratagems and covert operations slightly – but not really – surprises Harkness (who is certainly used to making the acquaintance of interesting people who are infinitely more than they at first seem), while at the same time making Edmund feel as though he's back in Narnia, debating with his agents on how best to proceed within Telmar.

It's never quite the same, not really, but it does sometimes come close.

...

She comes to him in the middle of the night, in the middle of a country that exists in the middle of an alien world she's only set foot in, briefly, once.

...

"Did she say anything? Come near you?" This from Peter one rare sunny English afternoon, as he and Edmund dig their spades into the earth of a London garden, searching for a treasure worth more than their entire world.

Edmund shakes his head, brow furrowed as he concentrates on his task. He's not surprised that Peter is asking. He knows Peter knows him better than anyone else does, would have known immediately and at a swift glance what the shuttered look and short tone meant. Edmund can lounge and snark all he wants, but Peter will always suss him out.

Edmund allows himself a quick quirk of his lips as he reflects on the fact that Jadis has neither said anything nor come near him in a long time, not since his sisters ordered it.

"She's just…there. She doesn't say anything, and she doesn't touch me, but she's always there." And suddenly, Edmund is exhausted.

Peter stares at him for a moment, a hard, blazing look simmering in his eyes. "Jadis is no longer," he says, and for all that they're standing in a respectable backyard in the middle of London, Peter sounds like the High King of Narnia once more, ready as ever to do savage battle.

And Edmund grins. Peter always has been, well…Peter.

**v**

She is nowhere.

...

She is nothing.

...

As Edmund stands with Peter at the station late that morning, waiting for the train to arrive, there is no Jadis, and there hasn't been for a long while – the Pevensies simply wouldn't have it any other way.

And in that single moment, that split second when everything implodes and expands and finally returns itself to rights –

There is only Narnia.

_fin._


End file.
